Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Raising the threshold crappiness

To operate successfully as a coffee shop, say, you have to be at least as good as a chain or else you fail

issue 07 October 2017

I love anything open late at night. Never mind ‘the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’; even mundane activities like filling up with petrol become enjoyably Edward Hopperish after midnight. Often the places are so quiet you wonder why they bother opening at all.

But it is a strange psychological fact that opening a shop 24 hours a day often pays, even if nobody ever buys anything between 1 a.m.

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